


Variation on the Word Sleep

by Kyra



Series: Sleeping in my Bed [2]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Awkwardness, Exes, F/M, Roommates, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4925881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-- and one time he slept in hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variation on the Word Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Sleeping In My Bed](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1306783/chapters/2714641). Set before/during/after Clean Break, the season 4 finale. 
> 
> Title [via Margaret Atwood](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/variation-word-sleep).

He almost doesn't see the mug. Walks right by it on his way to the kitchen for a post-work bowl of Froot Loops. It doesn't seem strange 'til he's opening the cabinet door and then he freezes and backs up into the living room to see if he really saw what he thought. Yup.

Nick looks around, even though he already knows the loft is dark and quiet, like it usually is when he gets home after a closing shift on a weeknight. Looks back at the mug and narrows his eyes. It hasn't been there all along, right? No.

He backs into the kitchen, warily keeping an eye on the mug until he turns the corner. It's stil there when he walks back out with his bowl of cereal. He chews and looks at it, frowning hard. This feels like a trick.

He takes his bowl over to the couch and flips on the TV, but it's not like he can concentrate on Fallon when the mug is just _sitting there_ , right beyond the corner of his eye. Staring at him.

Nick turns off the TV with a huff and brings his bowl back into the kitchen. The cereal's almost gone, so he chugs the rest with the remaining milk and dumps the bowl in the sink with a clatter. His palms are sweating.

This time he walks by the mug without even looking at it and heads straight to the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he comes out, it's still there, dim white at the end of the hallway. The question is, should he do anything?

Jess's room is as quiet as the others, door shut, and he bends down, trying to see if there's light under the door. It could be her little reading lamp or it could just be the ambient streetlight glow that filters in when she hasn't shut her curtains.

This feels so out-of-the-blue that he doesn't know what to do. Doesn't even know what he _wants_ to do. Well. Okay, maybe he does. But _how_ and _why_ and _really_?

He's frowning hard at Jess's door, arms crossed and his hands clenched around his own upper arms. Okay. No. If this is really what he thinks it is, he can ask her tomorrow; not risk waking her up and looking like a _complete and total idiot_ , and a needy one at that. 

Nick chews on his bottom lip and makes for his own bedroom, shutting the door behind him with a decisive click.

Inside, he shimmies out of his jeans and peels off his socks, leaving everything in a heap, which Schmidt despises, before flopping onto his bed in a t-shirt and boxers.

Schmidt's already asleep, his humidifier not quite masking the light snore that still slips out when he's wearing his dumb nasal strip. It's a familiar sound, white noise that usually gets Nick to fall asleep right away, but not tonight.

He waits approximately eleven billion minutes for sleep to come, but his mind is racing and eventually he flings himself back over the side of his bed with a groan.

He’s not letting himself think about what he’s doing as he strides back out into the hall and brings his hand up to knock on Jess's door, before pausing.

"Jess," he hisses instead, and the whisper sounds super loud in the hallway. His pulse is racing and he needs to cool it. "Jessica," he whispers again and risks tapping his knuckles lightly on the door, before wincing, because if there was an answer, he couldn't hear it over the sound of the knock. He feels vulnerable out here, his neck prickly, and any of his tiny-bladdered roommates might make a bathroom trip at any moment.

In fact, as he thinks about it, he's almost sure he hears a creak that could very probably be Coach's door opening. His heart rockets into his throat and he lets out a strangled noise under his breath, trying to simultaneously ease Jess's door open silently and fling himself through.

Jess _is_ awake and sits bolt upright in bed the second she sees him, as he shuts the door behind him as fast and silently as he can.

"Nick!" she says, eyes huge.

"Sorry!" he gasps out. "I thought I heard --" he jerks a thumb over his shoulder and then realizes there's no way to finish that sentence without sounding like an idiot.

".... hi," he says dumbly instead.

Jess lets the book she'd had clutched to her chest drop to her lap.

"Hi," she says back and swallows hard. 

She’s giving him a wary look and he thinks _ah-ha! She **did** leave the mug out._ As a sign. For him. 

.... except for how this is also how anyone would probably react to having their ex-boyfriend burst into their room in the middle of the night.

"I -- did you ..." he starts and narrows his eyes, trying to read her. She lets her book slide off her lap and pulls her knees up to her chest under the blankets, hugging them to herself. He licks his lower lip and her eyes flick down to it, then keep going, taking him all in. 'cause right, of course he'd forget he's in his underwear. Perfect, that doesn't make things more awkward. He swallows and plunges ahead.

"I was thinking that maybe you -- and if you didn't, it's cool, it makes sense, it probably makes _more_ sense, in which case can we just both pretend this absolutely never happened--"

"Spit it out, Nick!" she bursts out and he stops short and glowers at her.

"Did you put out our sex mug?" he blurts.

Jess's eyes, if possible, get even wider behind her glasses. 

"Our _sex_ mug?!" she echoes and oh god, he was wrong, he is the universe's most special kind of idiot-- and her shoulders deflate a little. "Oh, um, yes, the sex mug, I, uh-- yes, that was me. Who put it out. Heh."

Nick feels a complicated surge of emotions at once.

"Ah-ha!" he says, pointing at her, before his brain catches up. "Wait, what, really?"

Jess's eyes slide off of his.

"Haha," she says weakly. "Uh, yep. Yeah. That was me."

Nick pauses, trying to process. He takes a step forward, then another. She looks at his face again, alarmed.

“But you don’t have to worry about it,” she says quickly. “Sorry about that. It was, um, a mistake."

"A mistake," he echoes dumbly. She's in her short-sleeved summer pajamas, top button undone, which is basically as sexy as Jessica Day's sleepwear gets and he's trying not to, but his eyes keep sliding back to the hollow of her throat.

"Like basically a joke, really." She's red and not meeting his eye again. "Like, haha. Remember when we had a sex mug and we would put it out? What a riot."

"...uh, yup," he says, because she's practically squirming and this is a situation he really does not know how to read.

"Sorry," she says again, pushing her glasses up her nose and meeting his eye again. "I didn't mean to, um. Make things weird."

"Weird?" he says and scoffs, like he's not in his underwear in her bedroom in the middle of the night. A year after they broke up. "No way, dude," he says. "Ain't no weird here, missus."

Jess squints at him and cocks her head a little.

"Well .... good," she says.

"Yeah," he says, like she's still being a little ridiculous.

There's a pause and he realizes the next move is probably up to him.

"Well, goodnight then," he says, in the same tone and fumbles behind him for the door handle, missing entirely. Suave, Miller.

"Um, goodnight," says Jess.

“See ya'," he says as he finally finds the door handle and flees.

\--

Except now it's in his head, of course. Remembering how the mug was the first thing he'd look for when he'd come home late from work, a reason to grin to himself and skip his regular routine of beer and ESPN. He'd sock-slide down the hall to her room and crawl in bed beside her, knowing he had the green light to wake her up, sliding his hands under the hem of her shirt and kissing her neck until she made a pleased, sleepy noise and pressed into him.

Or when he would put it out because _everyone was around and up in their business all the time_ and he couldn't stand any more smoldering glances from her across an apartment full of their roommates. She was surprisingly good at finding ways to sneak up on him: slipping into the shower when he was getting ready for work, making up errands for them to go on because even sex in the backseat of her ridiculous Mexican lowrider of a car was good. No matter what his old man knees and back said.

He's still staring at the ceiling, trying to turn off the sex memory parade at 2am when Schmidt snores so loudly he wakes himself up and blames it on Nick and they get into a whispered no-you-shut-up fight, like it's any regular Wednesday night.

\--

The mug's gone in the morning and Jess isn't meeting his eyes in the kitchen. Instead she's making a show of how hard her life's going to be now that she has to find a replacement for Coach on her staff.

"Those are gonna be some big shoes to fill," she's saying, slapping Coach on the shoulder. "Literally!"

"Uh, yup," Coach says and knocks back his coffee. Schmidt's pointedly ignoring them both and Nick's trying to act like it's totally normal he's up before 8am. "Ready to go in a minute?” They’ve been carpooling to school most of the year.

"Sure thing, roomie," she says, simultaneously scooping up an oversized spoonful of yogurt and granola. "Right," says Coach and heads toward the bathroom. As soon as he's out of sight, Jess drops her spoon into her bowl and leans across the counter. 

"Guys, secret loft meeting later tonight," she stage whispers. "We're gonna give Coach the best NYC-themed sendoff this town has ever seen!"

"What?" says Schmidt, without looking up from his iPad's newsfeed. 

"Schmidt, come on, focus," she says, snapping in the air in front of his face. "This is a big deal, we have to acknowledge it!"

Nick makes a face.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of what Coach wants," he says. Jess frowns at him.

"Just because _you're_ , quote, 'morally opposed to themed parties of any kind'--" she makes airquotes as she says it, "--doesn't mean other people won't appreciate knowing they'll be missed."

"He's not a big goodbye-sayer, Jess," Nick says, wishing Schmidt were backing him up here. "Never has been."

Jess sits back on her stool and folds her arms, scowling at him for real now.

"People like a chance to reminisce about the good old days. Check in on each other's feelings." He’s shaking his head as she talks and that’s evidently the wrong move. “Ugh, Nick, why do you always have to—" she lets out a frustrated groan and throws her hands in the air.

Nick feels like he made a wrong turn somewhere and he's not quite sure what conversation they're having right now. Mercifully, that's when Coach hollers for Jess by the front door, jingling his keys, and she has to break eye contact with Nick and resume her morning rush out the door. She tosses her bowl in the sink, scoops an armful of papers into her bag and shoves her feet into a pair of flats in the corner, all without looking Nick's way once.

The door finally slams behind her and Coach and Nick lets out a groan, dropping his head onto the counter top. There are evil toast crumbs, tiny and sharp, interrupting the pure communion between his forehead and the counter.

"... what?" Schmidt finally says after a minute, glancing over at him. "What happened?"

\--

Things feel weird for a couple of days: through Jess’s loft planning meeting of Coach’s sendoff and the whole last week of their school year. Nick tries to keep his head down and avoid her, which seems to be more or less her strategy, too.

It’s why he drops his eyes right away when he almost bumps into her in the hallway on the way to the bathroom. From his peripheral vision he can see her start to sidle past before she pauses and huffs a sigh.

“Nick, stop,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. Nick pauses and looks at her hand, then her face.

“This is dumb,” she says. “Don’t you want to just know why I did it?"

“Did what?” he says, trying for nonchalant and landing on jumpy.

“Put the mug out,” she says, folding her arms. 

“Oh, that,” he says.

“Yes, _that_ ,” she says, then huffs out a sigh. “I don’t know,” she starts. “I guess, I just — it’s hard sometimes when you’re right there and, I’m a woman, Nick, you know, I’m allowed to get—” she drops her voice just a little. “— _urges_.”

Nick raises an eyebrow and she lifts her chin.

“Look, you were doing those squats!” she says, voice getting accusatory. “In the living room. Plus you had your towel tied _really_ low the other day in the bathroom.

"The mug was a, a — a sexual bat signal,” she says. “To see if you ever, you know. Get urges too."

“Oh, uh,” he says.

“Well, do you?” she pushes ahead. 

“What?” he says, wishing the wall weren’t at his back, feeling like he could break out a pretty good moonwalk right about now. The answer’s automatic, the party line he’s been selling all year. “Urges? No. Nope. Sorry. Not me."

Jess stares at him.

“Really,” she says flatly.

“Uh-uh,” he says. “I guess I just, um. Have been focused on different things."

“You never think about me that way,” she says in the same flat voice.

He shakes his head wordlessly and she lets out an exasperated noise and huffs off.

\--

He's had a whole year to perfect his technique. Nick Miller doesn't feel feelings, man. All it takes is a copious and steady intake of booze, pointedly not thinking about the bigger picture of his love life (or .... life), spending a little too much time reveling in doing things he didn't do when he was with Jess: smoking the occasional cigar with Schmidt, skipping showers for 3 days, the random bad idea hookup.

He's gotten really good at partitioning the Jesses in his brain. There's the one who sometimes guest stars doing filthy, naked things in his dreams. And the Jess who pops into his head when he’s farthest from sober, with the prettiest hair he’s ever wanted to tangle his fingers in, the secret, unabashed smile she’d give him, like he was a surprise she kept being delighted by.

And there's the Jess he sees around the loft every day, who starts sentences with "Well, _actually_..." when she's in know-it-all mode, who turns down the heat on the stove if one of them is cooking and she thinks the burner’s on too high, who tries to make Salad Thursdays a communal loft thing. He's gotten good at focusing on this Jess and all the ways she drives him nuts.

\--

Coach’s whole get-rid-of-everything kick means the trash room in their building is getting more action than it’s seen in years. Nick’s on his way out to work when he hears someone in the first floor hall grunting and muttering and pokes his head around the corner to see if it’s Outside Dave trying to capitalize on the sweet castoffs Nick hasn’t gotten a chance to look through yet. (They’ve had words in the past. Nick always gives him the evil eye on the sidewalk.)

It’s Jess, trying to shove the trash room door far enough open with one shoulder to deposit an armful of flattened cardboard boxes from her internet shopping shenanigans. 

“Mother _freaker_ ,” she says to herself just as Nick comes up behind her.

“Jess, stop,” he says, and gives the door a hard shove to open it, meaning she stumbles forward before turning to give him a half-irritated look.

“Thanks,” she says, and adds the cardboard to the pile in the corner. Nick keeps holding the door as she ducks back out under his arm, dusting her hands off.

“Right,” she says. “Well.” She’s not meeting his eye and Nick closes his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.

“Jess,” he says and saying her name unlocks everything he's been thinking since they talked. “Of course I still think of you like that, are you kidding me? I mean, look at you.” He gestures toward her outfit, up and down, and she presses her lips together in the way that means she’s pleased.

“How can I _not_ have urges,” he goes on, taking a step towards her. “Do you even know—"

“Hazardous waste, coming through!” shouts Schmidt as he rounds the corner, holding a bag of garbage well in front of him. He has rubber gloves on _and_ his heavy duty cleaning mask and Nick and Jess jump out of the way as he pushes the trash door back open and flings the bag into one of the bins.

“ _Ugh,_ ” he says with a shudder as the door shuts behind him. He pulls down his mask with a gloved hand to glower at them both. “Are you aware of the toxins that were growing in the back of our fridge? Disgusting. We are so having a loft meeting about this later."

“I think that stuff was Coach’s,” Jess says just as Nick’s saying, “That was Coach’s food.” Schmidt makes a face at both of them.

“Nice try,” he says. “Raspberry yogurt?” he points at Jess. “A half-eaten Philly cheesesteak?” he points at Nick.

“… late for work!” Nick says and hustles off. He makes a _sorry_ face at Jess over Schmidt’s shoulder and she gives him a complicated, considering look that sticks around in his head the whole rest of the night.

\--

"Do you want to know the other reason, though?" Jess says, like they're in the middle of a conversation, even though it's out of the blue.

They're at a bar doing going away drinks for Coach and May, which is basically entirely made up of May's friends and Coach's roommates. It's at one of the bars from the night of his epic crawl, when Coach and May met. Honestly, his memories are pretty fuzzy, so it's weird to be here semi-sober. Well. At least not smashed.

He had some kind of fancy sipping tequila earlier, spotted by Schmidt, but since then he's been working his way through a phalanx of Dos Equis bottles. 

Jess is on at least her third mango margarita and they're hitting her pretty hard. It's not weird if he still automatically keeps track of that kind of thing. He's a bartender, it's his professional job. Plus it's a habit with Jess from way before they were dating.

"The other reason for what?" he says and damn, she's too stupidly cute when she drinks, leaning in toward him, cheeks flushed pink. It's kind of a problem for him.

"The other reason for why I put the mug out," she says.

They're alone in their booth right now, but Nick automatically checks the area around them for any of their idiot roommates.

"Jess..." he says. "Maybe now's not the best time."

Not the best time because who knows if she's going to get all weird tomorrow about whatever she's about to say. Not the best time because now he's thinking about their last conversation on this topic and the alcohol has a lot of things to say about the idea of Jess wanting him. Looking at him. Thinking about him in bed with her, oh god.

Jess ignores him and plows ahead, still leaning forward so he can't help but notice how her chest is flushed too.

"I mean, the sex part was true," she says. "You're one hot mister. And it's hard -- um, I mean it's not fair because we were so _good_ , Nick. I mean we were really freaking good at doing it."

Something both wistful and aroused twists in his chest, which is not a combination he'd known was possible.

"Best I ever had," he says, before his brain catches up with his mouth. Jess looks startled, then pleased -- so easy for him to read, always, still.

"Yeah, well," she says, ducking her head but not breaking eye contact. "Back atcha, Miller."

Nick feels a surge of pride and knows now he's the one looking smug. But Jess turns serious again.

"But it's not just -- I didn't just want to take the Slip'n'Slide to Pleasuretown--" She pauses and winces as Nick makes a face. "Oh my god, forget I said that, I’ve been living with Schmidt for way too long."

"I almost want to jar you for that," he agrees.

She makes a face and grabs for her drink, sucking up the melted ice at the bottom with an abundance of straw noises. He waits for her to collect herself, wanting her to finish the sentence, terrified of her finishing the sentence.

"I guess I just missed you," she says into her glass before looking up at him. "I wanted -- I don't know what I wanted."

She chews on her bottom lip and he can't look away, feels absurdly aware of his grip on his beer bottle and her face and nothing else.

"I wanted things to be easy again," she finally says, a little quieter. "You know?"

Nick exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"Yeah," he says eventually. "I know."

She smiles unhappily, eyes suspiciously bright.

"Pretty stupid," she says. "You can't just ... skip over all the bad stuff or the reasons why something didn't work and just ... pick up where you left off."

Her hand's on the tabletop beside them and he moves his own hand so the side of it is brushing up against hers. She sighs a little and turns her hand palm up.

"Right?" she says and he slides his thumb over her palm so it's resting in the center, rubbing back and forth almost imperceptibly.

"Yeah," he says. "Right." He's saying it so they can both hear it. "Doesn't work that way." No matter how much either of them wishes it would.

"Do you ever think--" she says, looking at their hands instead of his face.

"The jukebox policy here is _un_ believable," Schmidt says loudly, dropping into the booth beside Nick. He and Jess jerk their hands apart so fast that Nick's knee hits the underside of the table and she almost knocks over her glass, but Schmidt doesn't seem to notice. His arms are flung out on the back of the booth and he's glowering towards, presumably, the jukebox.

"I just want to play a little goodbye Drake for Coach but apparently it's 'first come, first served,' and the cretins before me put in $30."

"Um, isn't that the policy of all jukeboxes, Schmidt?" Jess asks.

"Not the point," he snaps, then groans, dropping his head back as the next song comes on. "Oh my god, seriously? Shania Twain?"

Winston wandered over at some point during the conversation and points the neck of his beer bottle toward Schmidt.

“Looks like we made it,” Winston tells him somberly. “Look how far we’ve come. My baby."

Schmidt scoffs and Nick sneaks a tiny peek at Jess, who’s looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She flushes when he catches her and looks away before wondering loudly if there’s any decent food on the bar menu. She and Schmidt end up in an intense discussion about whether nachos can be considered a meal, or at least meal-like (Jess: Team Protein. Schmidt: Team That’s-Probably-Not-Even-Real-Cheese). 

Nick squeezes his way past Schmidt out of the booth, out of the bar, to the sidewalk where he tries to clear his head, where he tries to think about anything except how her hand had felt against his.

\--

Of course he wants things to be easy again. It’s all he spent that first six months after the breakup thinking about. How he had no idea to get back from this complicated, unhappy place. To when they just liked each other, and that's all that mattered.

\--

Even after the downer of saying goodbye to Coach and May in the street, the day is full of the weird, crazy energy of Schmidt and Cece’s oddsmakers-did-not-even-see-that-coming engagement. 

They end up back in the loft and someone finds a leftover bottle of champagne in the back of the vegetable drawer and they do rounds one, two and three of toasts to the engagement.

"This is crazy!" Jess keeps saying, at the pitch that means she's mostly happy, but a little freaked out.

"I know!" Cece keeps answering, but she's barely looking at anyone besides Schmidt. She’s on Schmidt’s lap on the couch and she leans in to rest her forehead against his.

Nick’s never seen Schmidt smile this much, maybe ever. Or, okay, stick his tongue that far down anyone’s throat, okay, that’s happening right now. 

"Boooo!" Nick says loudly as he realizes where Schmidt's hand is heading, and beside him, Jess makes a noise of mock disgust.

"Oh my god, get a room!"

Schmidt and Cece break apart, blushing and looking unrepentant. Winston shakes his head.

"Are we gonna have to evict your asses out of here, or do you just want the rest of us to leave, so you can do the nasty on the couch?"

"Um, yeah," says Cece climbing off Schmidt's lap and standing. "Maybe we should just--" she gestures vaguely at the hall with the hand that's not still holding Schmidt's.

"I could show you that one thing--" Schmidt agrees as she tugs him to his feet. He's not even looking at the rest of them.

"You're fooling no one!" Nick says and that breaks Schmidt's gaze off Cece's face long enough for him to throw a grin to all of them.

"Fine then, I'm going to go make love--"

" _Ew_ ," says Jess loudly.

"--to my freaking fiancee!" he finishes, looking back at Cece and she manages to roll her eyes and look pleased at the same time. Schmidt's tongue is in her mouth again in a second and this time she ends up with her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands on her ass, as he stumbles them down the hall.

"We're going to have to see so much more of that, aren't we?" Nick says flatly and Winston laughs.

"Like you two can talk," he says, downing the rest of his champagne and standing. "That's how bad you'd be before _breakfast_."

He grabs the nearly-empty champagne bottle as he rounds the coffee table. There's a whoop and then a shriek of laughter from down the hall and they all make simultaneous faces.

"And on _that_ note," Winston says. "I'm going to bed. With my cat and my good friend, Noise Canceling Headphones." He gives them a mock bow and saunters off.

The room feels abruptly quiet and empty with just the two of them. And awkward, thanks, Winston.

Jess is on the couch beside him and makes a face when he glances her that means she feels it too. Nick grabs a handful of chips out of the bowl on the table to give his hands something to do. He’s focusing very carefully on eating them when Jess breaks the silence.

"Maybe it _is_ just that easy," she says, sounding wistful and doubtful at once. "You just ... go for it. And work it out after you get there."

She's not looking at him, but he feels very, very aware of how close they are. He wants to reach over, brush her hair away from her neck, have her turn her head and give him that soft look that made it impossible not to kiss her.

"... or you end up divorced after ten years of hating each other, like my parents," she says, looking at her lap. "Or one of you walks out and vanishes and your kids grow up without a dad, like Schmidt and Winston--" She breaks off and he finishes for her.

"Or one of you pretends it’s totally normal that the other one disappears for months at a time and likes to bet the deed to your house on horse races."

Jess looks up at him, frowning, concern in her eyes and he smiles to let her know it's all right.

"No wonder we didn't do so hot, huh?" he says, trying to keep his voice light. "Maybe all relationships are just doomed from the start."

Jess frowns harder and shakes her head, like he knew she would.

"I don't believe that," she says. "I can't believe that. Some things are worth it. You just have to fight for them."

Nick looks at her and waits for her to hear what she's said. The sadness passes over her face like a shadow in a moving car, there and gone.

"Not that we weren't--" she starts and he shakes his head, because this is way too heavy and hard a conversation for a night that's been this full. Or any other night. 

Jess pauses, then opens her mouth again, and he puts a hand on her knee without thinking.

"It's fine, Jess," he says, mustering up a smile and squeezing her knee lightly. "I know what you mean."

Jess looks down at his hand on her knee, face unreadable.

“You do?" she says, so softly he almost can’t hear it, then shakes her head and puts her hand on top of his to squeeze back. When she looks up again, she's got a faux-cheery smile pasted on and she pats his hand twice, like they're just good old pals.

"ANYway," she says, in her normal voice, and he's able to move again, pull his hand back and give her a closed-lip smile back.

"Anyway," he echoes.

There's a pause while they look at each other and then Jess shakes her head and stands up.

"Bedtime for me, I think," she says. The back of her knees brush against his legs as she slides between him and the coffee table.

"G'night," he says and she waves over her shoulder.

"'Night, Nick."

The door to her room shuts and Nick exhales hard, dropping his head back on the couch. 

\--

Nick's pulling Schmidt's Sexiled Survival Kit out of the hall closet, when Jess comes out of the bathroom and sees him.

("Stop using my stuff!” Schmidt had shouted last time he caught Nick. "Make your own survival kit! Last time you got Cheeto dust all over my microfiber blanket."

"There's no way to prove that was me and also I like your squishy eye thing!"

"It's a luxury, cooling sleep mask, you cretin.")

Jess is in her bathrobe and her face is scrubbed shiny and clean.

"Oh," she says, looking from his armful of blanket to his shut bedroom door and back again. "Oh, right."

Nick raises his eyebrows and gives her a lopsided smile and she ducks her head, shuffling past. She hovers outside her bedroom door for a second.

"Well, goodnight," she says again and heads into her room, the door shutting with a soft click behind her.

He's ensconced on the couch, one arm behind his head, playing a soothing bedtime game of Snake on his phone ("That's so retro it's _sad_ ," Winston said last time he caught him. "What's before retro? Neanderthal?"), when the phone vibrates and he loses his concentration, so the snake chomps itself and dies.

It's a new message, from Jess.

 _Hey_ , it says. After a moment, another comes through. _You don't have to sleep on the couch._

 _cece schmidt sex den :P_ he texts back. There's a pause so long his eyes start to droop shut before another one comes through.

 _You can sleep in here._

Nick swallows, his mouth suddenly dry, and tries to process a response. The pause must unnerve her because a flurry of texts come through together:

_Just sleep. I mean._

_If you want._

_You don't have to._

Nick stares at the screen, then the wall hiding Jess's bedroom, then back at the screen. He lifts his thumb to answer then frowns and flips his phone closed. 

He just barely raps his knuckles on Jess's door before pushing it gently open. It's dark inside, almost as dark as the hall, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. 

"Jess?" he says into the murk, and hears the sheets rustle as she shifts. After a beat, he realizes she's lying on her side, watching him. Nick eases the door shut behind himself, keeping one hand on the doorknob.

"Hey," she says softly. 

His back's to the closed door and half of him wants to stride across the room to her and the other half wants to bolt. Back to the couch, where things are simple; back to last week and last month and this whole damn year, when at least he was very clear on where things stood between them. Game over, out of quarters, no lives left. 

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he says. She shrugs one shoulder. 

"No," she says. "We can really just sleep, though. Or talk." Her voice falters a little. "I miss talking to you, Nick."

He knows what she means. They've drawn these borders for themselves and kept inside them. It's the only way he's known how to deal with... all of this. Otherwise it's too easy for things between them to get, well, too easy. So easy it’s hard to remember why they’re apart, so simple it’s physically painful not to reach out and touch her like the old days.

Instead of answering, he lets go of the doorknob he's been clutching behind his back and makes his way around the bed. He doesn’t realize what he’s done until he’s already climbing in: gone to his side, the side that was his when they were together.

Just being back in this bed is a sense memory he’s not prepared for. Jess’s pillow top mattress, her non-scratchy sheets, the smell of her laundry detergent. The deja vu is so intense it feels like vertigo and he’s not sure he can handle it. 

He closes his eyes and focuses on breathing as he feels Jess shift beside him. When he opens his eyes and turns his head to look over, she’s rolled to face him, face solemn, hand tucked under her cheek. There’s a good two feet of bed between them but this still feels strange.

“Blast from the past,” she says and he gives her a small, tight smile. She watches him for another minute, eyes searching his face for something.

“I thought it would be the same, but I feel so different," she whispers finally. "From back then. Don't you?" There's a pause in the dark and she adds: "Feel different?"

He takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out slowly.

"Yeah," he says. It feels like a long, long time ago, when they were them. Together. 

“Do you really think Schmidt and Cece are going to make this work?” she asks after a moment and he shrugs one shoulder.

“Dunno. I hope so. If that dummy manages not to screw things up again."

She lets out a humorless little laugh and Nick turns his head back so he’s looking up at the ceiling then, instead of Jess's pale face floating in the dark.

“G’night, Nick,” she says after a long minute and he shuts his eyes.

“Night,” he answers, without looking back to see her expression.

It feels like a mistake coming in here; he feels so out of place, the physical reality of it so different of how things are between them.

But it makes him remember, too: this is still here, she’s still here, none of it’s vanished to another dimension, she hasn’t moved or left. She wanted him to come in. It’s like a door that’s not open, but not quite closed either, and he’s too tired and muddleheaded to figure out what to do about it, but it feels like something important.

“Hey,” she says, just as he’s drifting off. “Thanks for... being here."

He’s too far gone to open his eyes or answer, but he finds her hand under the covers and squeezes. Trusting she’ll know what he means.


End file.
